John Wayne Gacy

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Source: http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/gacy.htm

John Wayne Gacy:
John Wayne Gacy

John Wayne Gacy was convicted of the torture, rape and murder of 33 males between 1972 until his arrest in 1978. He was dubbed the "Killer Clown" because he entertained kids at parties as "Pogo The Clown." He was eventually convicted and sentenced to death. On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed by lethal injection.

Gacy's First Known Attack:

The first known account of John Gacy's sadistic behavior began after his marriage to Marilynn Myers in 1964 in Iowa. He was working in management at his father-in-law's restaurant and somehow lured a young boy to the back and tried to sodomize him when he refused to perform oral sex. The boy reported Gacy to the police and he ended up doing 18 months of a 10 year prison sentence on a sexual molestation conviction.

Divorced and Disgraced:

After prison, divorced and disgraced, he decided to return to his hometown Chicago and start a new life. He remarried but the marriage ended quickly, leaving Gacy alone to feed his sadistic fantasies. By 1978 he was actively cruising for homosexual young men and luring them to his home where he would then torture, rape and brutally kill them.

Looking for Work:

Another tactic he used to get young men to his home was through posting jobs at his construction company. He would lure them to his house on the pretext of talking to them about a job. Once the boys got inside his home he would overpower them, knock them unconscious and begin his gruesome crime of torture, rape and murder.

Care for a Cup of Coffee?:

The police became suspicious of Gacy when a mother of one boy who was to meet Gacy about a job never returned home. When the police saw Gacy's criminal record they began to keep a close eye on him. Gacy, in his usual bizarre behavior, invited the police in for coffee. The police accepted the invitation and once inside they became overwhelmed by a strong odor which they recognized as possibly coming from a decaying dead body.

Bodies Found Under the Crawlspace:

The police then obtained a search warrant and uncovered 29 bodies in the crawlspace of Gacy's house. The bodies were all male and ranged in age from nine years old to their mid-20s. Later Gacy admitted to more killings in which he dumped the bodies into a nearby river. In searching for all possible victims, the police excavated Gacy's yard and gutted the house, eventually tearing it completely down.

Executed in 1994 by Lethal Injection:

After he was convicted and sentenced to death in 1980, he continued to taunt authorities with different versions of his story about the murders in an attempt to stay alive. Authorities were not swayed and on May 10, 1994 his execution by lethal injection was carried out.


Update on Gacy (2012)

John Wayne Gacy may have had accomplices

John Wayne Gacy (1978 arrest photo, inset) was also an artist, and painted this self-portrait, "Pogo the Clown."  >
The sordid saga of “Killer Clown” John Wayne Gacy has taken a new twist almost 20 years after he was executed for the torture, rape and killing of 33 boys and young men in 1970s Chicago.
Two Chicago defense attorneys digging into the infamous case argue that justice has not fully been done because they believe three accomplices may have participated in some of the crimes. Two of the supposed accomplices are still alive, they said, but they would not identify either one.
The attorneys, Robert Stephenson and Steven Becker, contend that it was impossible for Gacy to have acted alone in three of the murders.
“There is significant evidence out there that suggests that not only did John Wayne Gacy not operate alone, he may not have been involved in some of the murders, and the fact that he was largely a copycat murderer,” Stephenson told WGN-TV.
Their findings echo claims made by a victim who got away, who said another man was present when Gacy raped him in the 1970s. And they also dovetail with claims Gacy made from jail that he was not in Illinois when 16 of the victims vanished, and that he had accomplices as well.
The lawyers’ findings are being taken seriously by investigators, who were presented with the new details Friday. Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart termed their investigation “very fruitful.”
“I definitely would not dismiss what they have said. It’s not out of left field. It’s well thought out,” Dart told MSNBC.com.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the attorneys found work and travel records showing that Gacy was not in Chicago when two of the disappearances occurred, and that he may not have had the time to carry out a third crime.
Yet the bodies of all three men were among 29 found in a crawl space below Gacy’s house of horrors in unincorporated Norwood Park Township. (The other victims were found in a river.)
In one of the three cases, Robert Gilroy, 18, disappeared between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Sept. 15, 1977. The investigators, however, found that Gacy was out of town when Gilroy vanished. They have a copy of an Alleghany Airlines ticket showing Gacy had flown to Pittsburgh on Sept. 12 and did not return to Chicago until the night of the 16th, a full day after Gilroy disappeared.
The second case involves the disappearance of Russell Nelson, a Minneapolis architecture student visiting Chicago with an older friend. He disappeared from outside a disco in October 1977, according to that friend, who contacted the family. That friend later changed his story, the researchers said, and repeatedly “threatened” Nelson’s mom for money in exchange for help looking for Nelson, WGN reported.
The investigators don’t think Gacy could have kidnapped Nelson in sight of the friend outside the bar, but the friend does have a link to Gacy, they said.
Nelson’s brothers went to Chicago to help look for Russell, and met with Russell’s friend, who they say offered them a contracting job with Gacy, who also worked as a volunteer clown on the side.
Becker and Stephenson told WGN that his friend now lives in another state.
The third case involves John Mowery, 18, who disappeared in Chicago on the evening of Sept. 25, 1977. Records show Gacy was already in Michigan at 6 a.m. the next morning on a contracting job, making it unlikely he could have pulled off the elaborate crime in so small a window of time.
Another telling difference: Gacy usually used rope and board to strangle his victims; but Nelson and Gilroy were suffocated, with cloth found in their mouths, WGN reported.
Further, the investigators say that Gacy may have been inspired by an earlier mass-murder case. Dean Corll, who used accomplices, also tortured, raped and strangled 28 mostly boys in Houston in the early 1970s.
Terry Sullivan, a member of the Gacy prosecution team, supports the new investigation.
“I felt from the beginning that there may be loose ends. It was such a huge case that mesmerized the city at the time,” he told WGN.
Not everyone is convinced. Gacy’s defense attorney say Gacy confessed to everything early on, and he’s holding to that view, he told WGN.
The investigators say they are simply trying to bring closure to the relatives of Gacy’s victims, and started the probe last year at the behest of a victim’s family. They want to bring the men to justice if indeed they share guilt for some of the heinous crimes.
“We’ve been in contact with many, many victims’ family members over the past six months. None of them were really surprised by what was announced last night,” Stephenson told msnbc.com. “Some of them don’t want to talk about it and revisit old wounds. Others do, and those that do have provided really valuable information.”
The relative looking for answers include Teresa Nelson, the sister-in-law of Russell.
“I would like to know if anybody else was involved and that they are brought to justice for what they did to him. There could’ve been somebody else out there,” she told WGN.

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